


Riddles Wisely Expounded

by aameyalli



Series: Cadash Stories [2]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-25
Updated: 2020-03-25
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:42:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23314087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aameyalli/pseuds/aameyalli
Summary: **currently being rewritten, come back in a bit!**
Relationships: Male Cadash/Dorian Pavus
Series: Cadash Stories [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1676107
Comments: 2
Kudos: 22





	Riddles Wisely Expounded

**Author's Note:**

> You can find my joke comics and art pieces about Fionn and Dorian on my DA blog, @hawkepockets on tumblr!

**Chapter 1: Dungeon Water**

“Your men are dead, Alexius.” The Herald of Andraste sounded sorry for it, too. He stepped forward towards the dais, spreading his arms in benediction. “Stand down. Let the mages go. This can all be forgiven.”

But Alexius recoiled. He looked round wildly, hunched like a cornered beast. “Forgiven? You… You are a _mistake._ You should _never_ have existed.”

Almost too late, Dorian saw the medallion clutched in his fingers. “No!” Dorian filled his hands with raw magic, threw it in a burning arc toward his teacher. Alexius staggered as it hit and clutched his head. Dorian thought wildly, _I’ve hurt him. No—_ And then the room was a blaze of green light, tipping sideways, upside down, blinding— 

— 

They crashed into a cold, wet place. Dorian landed on his feet, naturally. He’d always been graceful, among other virtues.

The Herald went down like a felled tree. Just pitched forward, facefirst, into the dungeon water— _dungeon water?!—_ and vanished from sight. Dorian waited a second, but the Herald didn’t come up for air. The waters stilled.

 _“Kaffas!”_ Dorian waded forward, searching around with his hands and feet, and had just kicked something solid and dwarf-shaped when the guards burst in, head to toe in _hideous_ armor.

“Blood of the Elder One!” said the first tin can. “Where’d you come from?”

It sounded like an invitation to banter, but they were running straight towards Dorian with swords and the Herald was apparently drowning, so Dorian just lashed out his hand, dark with magic, and killed them both instead.

A second later the Herald broke the surface with a crazy splash. He reared back like a bear, swinging his head around, before catching sight of Dorian and calming down. He looked pathetic, his hair and beard dripping, his jaunty hat floating away across the flooded cell.

“What was that about?” Dorian said, a little irritably.

“Can’t swim.”

“It’s calf deep.”

“Your calf.”

“So you decided to lay there underwater and die? I was having a swordfight up here.” (This was slightly untrue.)

The Herald shrugged. “Figured I _was_ dead until you kicked me. Hell, it’s dark down there.” He had a very sweet smile and was clearly an idiot. Dorian tried to shake off the disappointment.

They were, as he’d thought, in a dungeon full of water. Cold, foul, oily, nasty dungeon water, filling up his boots and glimmering with a dull red light. Great spikes of red stone grew from the walls and floor, casting the glow. He didn’t quite know what to call that stuff.

“Displacement,” he said, focusing on the subject he _could_ hold forth on. “Interesting! It’s probably not what Alexius intended, but the rift must have moved us toward the closest confluence of arcane energy.”

He squatted down beside a jut of red stone, getting a better look. The glow moved through it in slow, melting ripples. He thought he could hear something. A very faint buzzing. What _was_ that?

“Red lyrium,” said the Herald, close behind him. “Don’t poke it, please.”

Dorian raised his eyebrows. “Red—?”

“Lyrium. You know. _Tale of the Champion?”_

“I don’t read that drivel.”

“It’s the book of our generation,” said the Herald, crossing his arms. “Just trust me and keep your paws off. You’ll turn into a statue or grow an extra mouth or somethin’, and I just wouldn't care for that at all. Why are we standing in dungeon water?”

“Good question. Let’s see.” Dorian stood. “If we’re still in the castle, it… isn’t... Ah! Of course!” He grinned, and the Herald grinned back, though he could not possibly understand where this was going. “It’s not simply where, it’s _when!_ Alexius used the amulet as a focus. He moved us through time.”

“Time travel?”

“Well. We didn’t so much _travel_ through time as punch a _hole_ through time and throw it in the privy.”

“Well…” The Herald worked his jaw for a second, as if chewing the idea. “...ain’t that just the way.”

“Not generally. But don’t worry,” Dorian smirked. He rescued the drifting hat and dropped it on the dwarf’s spiky auburn head. “I’m here. I’ll protect you.”

The Herald squinted back, a teasing, twinkling look. “Will you now? Got a plan?’’

“I have some thoughts. They’re lovely thoughts. Like little jewels.”

“I’ll bet.” The Herald fished his bow and quiver from the water, shook them out, and strapped them on his back. “We’ll have a great story when we get back, huh? Two handsome, devilish strangers, thrown together by fate, hand in hand, saving the world… from the future _.”_

“It could be the past,” Dorian pointed out.

“...From the past.’’

“Saving the world from the past and/or future. And I am not holding your hand.”

“Yet.” The Herald gave the brim of his hat a quick tug to restore its cocky angle. He winked at Dorian and clicked his tongue. “Let’s go.”

Dorian followed him out of the cell, feeling slightly warm around the ears.

— 

As they fought their way through the castle’s rotten underbelly, Dorian learned how the Herald had survived this long. It wasn’t wisdom or learning or divine intervention as far as he could tell. It was those brown eyes, wide and shining like a cat’s in the dark, and the bow that rode so easy in his hands that Dorian didn’t even notice him drawing and nocking it the first time, until the Venatori guard was dead with a green-fletched arrow sprouting under his chin.

The Herald whistled as he worked.

The next time, there were three Venatori. They jumped out from a hidden alcove, swords shaking overhead, _“Something, something, Elder One!”_ and Dorian called up magic to his fingertips, wove it deftly into Wisps of the Fallen, and threw it like a fine net over the guards—who’d already gone limp.

One, two, three arrows through the slits in their visors and straight through the eyes. They slumped over each other in a pile. Waste of a gorgeous spell. Dorian’s pride prickled.

He felt himself being drawn into a silent, dirty contest of who could take the guards down quicker. Dorian was nimble, his magic striking venomous and true, but the arrows with green fletching always found their marks first. Dwarves must have a natural advantage, he thought, rather poutily. Seeing in the dark. And those big arms. Not fair.

Well. Dorian couldn’t land a death blow faster than the archer, but he _could_ use a pinch of Horror, set the guards to crashing around, yowling in alarm and running into walls, which gave the Herald a harder time. So satisfying to watch.

The Herald squinted good-humoredly up at him from under his hat. “Are you trying to give me the runaround?”

“Oh, come now. You’ve hardly broken a sweat.”

“Uh-huh. I’ll get you back after the world’s saved. Go ahead and kill the next batch, if you’re so tired of second fiddle.”

“Ah, so now you’re _gifting_ me Venatori to slaughter? How generous of you.”

“If you don’t want ‘em…”

Dorian felt wretched for almost having fun.

—

But then they found the prisoner. A sad, bony shade of a man, his shoulders crooked, his eyes cast upward, his voice a bare scraping. “Andraste guide me, Andraste hold me…”

“Ser?” the Herald said, rushing up to the cell bars, earnest as you please. His optimism was hard to look at.

“Andraste guide me…”

“He’s not listening, Herald,” Dorian said. “The poor thing’s snapped.”

The Herald put his bow away and took the prisoner’s hands through the bars. His large, freckled hands enveloped the human’s completely. “It’s gonna be OK,” he said.

Those damnable puppy eyes. The Herald really _meant_ it.

The Herald picked the lock and left the cell door standing open. The man didn’t leave, just stood there as if dangled, muttering prayers. Dorian thought it might be nicer just to kill him, but he didn’t have the stomach either.

They went on through the corridors. Dorian had never heard the tune the Herald whistled. It was bright and folksy, distinctly Southern, and very unsettling. Much like the dwarf himself. It echoed off the damp stone walls, drawing attention from Venatori now and then. Every one of them died on sight.

— 

“What do I call you?” Dorian asked, because that little scene with the prisoner had been awful and he needed another distraction besides being shown up, stopping the apocalypse, and talking about having to stop the apocalypse. “My Lord Herald? Your Worship? Grand Poobah?”

“Fionn,” said the Herald.

“No, really.”

“Fionn,” said the Herald. “And you’re Dorian.”

“As you wish. I accept the terms. Second question—”

“Outta?”

“As many as it takes to amuse me. Come, be good company. I’ve had so little since crossing the sea.”

Fionn waved him off, but the little smile and duck of his head was more than permissive.

“Second question: where _did_ you learn to shoot a bow like that? Wardens? Carta? Legion of the Dead? Wait, don’t tell me—I’m detecting a fruity note of... Coterie?”

“Hm. Uh. Depends.” Fionn’s smile quirked to the side. “Where’d you learn to shoot lightning, Sparkles? I bet it was someplace real sunny and nice.”

“Carastes. It is sunny, as a matter of fact. And I don’t recall agreeing to ‘Sparkles.’”

“Uh-huh,” said Fionn. This seemed a favorite expression of his. Dorian had to wonder if all Southerners were so inclined to grunting, or if it was just a Herald thing.

“Well? Was it the Coterie?”

“Uh-uh,” said Fionn. The negative grunt.

Dorian raised his eyebrows, impatient and intrigued.

Fionn killed another Venatori. Dorian hadn’t even seen them, too preoccupied with the puzzle he’d been handed. Such were the hazards of a bright, scholarly, inquisitive nature. He couldn’t help it.

“Give me a clue,” said Dorian. “One clue. We’ll make a marvelous game of it.”

“Uh.” Fionn scouted around the corner, bow readied. After a second he nodded that the coast was clear. “No. Stop asking. I’m telling you that dog won’t hunt.”

“Aha! You’re Fereldan.”

“Huh? Oh. Uh. Maybe. I just meant… I’m keepin’ it to myself. Aren’t we playing a question game already?”

“You didn’t—“

“Third question?” said Fionn. “Gotta be a new one.” And he tugged the brim of his hat like that was _cadit quaestio._

Dorian made an indignant noise. “Alright. Third question. What song were you whistling?”

“ ‘Riddles Wisely Expounded,’ ” said the Herald, and winked at him again.

— 

After an upward climb that had them both out of breath, the two men stepped out into surface air and a shifting liquid pale green light.

The room they entered was cavernous. Around the perimeter, a staggered double row of pillars. In the middle, a wide expanse. Perhaps this was a ballroom, or what passed for one in the South. A Fade rift yawned in the center of the room. Dorian had seen a few by now, but it was mistifying still. A sheet of light, thin as gauze, rippling in midair, and Fionn’s left hand lighting up in answer.

“Stay here,” said Fionn. “I’ll go monster baiting.”

The Herald walked out across the open floor, looking very small and dark against that field of glistening stone. He lifted his hand as if greeting a friend. Magic leapt between the rift and his open palm, wild and crackling, shooting acid-bright sparks, like electricity arcing across a broken circuit. The Fade seemed to take a shuddering breath in Dorian’s ear.

It was beautiful. Alien. Troubling.

And then a lot _more_ troubling and less of the other things, as a horde of demons erupted through the floor. Ten, maybe more.

“Back up!” Dorian shouted. He called for lightning and cracked it like a whip at the closest demon, a Shade that shrank back with a hideous whine. “Herald, back _up!”_

The dwarf’s silhouette was lost in a mass of demons.

Dorian struck the Shade again. Its black skin sizzled. It screamed at him and pushed itself forward with heavy strokes of its arms, like a swimmer against the undertow. Dorian danced backward. The Shade slammed its fists into the floor, leaving cracks in the flagstones and missing him by inches. Dorian ducked around behind it. His next spell cut it in half at the waist—or where the waist _would_ be if Shades weren’t shaped like banana slugs—and it broke apart into black flakes of magic.

He swept his staff around in a clean semicircle, warding off any surprises from his flank, and tried to spot the Herald. He couldn’t. Demons were clustered on the spot where Fionn had stood, slashing and writhing like maggots in sunlight, but if they had a target Dorian couldn’t see it. Couldn’t see _him._ Had Fionn gone down so easy?

“Over here, you blighters!” Dorian howled, slamming his staff into the ground and calling a great big purple burst of lightning. Two more Shades died, caught in the fireworks display. The rest of them—well, he’d got their attention.

The Herald showed himself, ricocheting out of the demon swarm with a rather showy backflip and firing down into the fray. A second later he was gone in a flash of black powder, and Dorian was on his own again, with half a dozen demons bearing down.

Dorian walked backward, casting in a fan in front of him. Horror. Terror. Despair. Lightning thrown in vicious hoops. Another Shade down. The rest kept coming. There was a Rage demon in the center, the others shielding it, escorting it, like soldiers bringing a battering ram up to a fortress wall. Which, Dorian flattered himself, made _him_ the fortress.

A demon collapsed, bristling with arrows like a porcupine. Fionn was a flicker of movement between stone pillars. Dorian wrapped a cord of lightning around a Shade’s thick neck and pulled hard, reducing it to cinders, and kept backing up. The Herald shot another one down. And the Rage demon advanced.

Dorian’s heel struck something cold and hard. He’d been pushed back to the second row of pillars, almost to the wall. Pinned down.

Dorian swore.

The Rage billowed up like a plume of smoke in front of him, raising its fists in tantrum. Dorian threw himself to the side but Rage was faster than a Shade. Its clawed hand thumped down in the center of his back. He fell, knocking his chin hard on the stone floor. Ropes of white light streaked across his vision. The pain went sharp, then dull.

_“Dorian!”_

He rolled to the side. The Rage punched the floor an inch from his head and roared in his face, splattering him with drops of condensed steam. Its breath was hot and acrid. He needed to _move!_

An arrow burst from the Rage’s yellow eye, then another. The demon wheeled around, roaring again, searching for Fionn.

Dorian scrambled to his feet and ran, pulling a hasty barrier around his shoulders like a cape. The demon’s fist hadn’t broken his armor but _kaffas,_ his back ached. He could feel warm blood in ribbons from his chin down his neck. At the end of the row of columns he pivoted, throwing a lightning bolt back at the demons, and caught sight of the Herald, standing under the rift, head thrown back, left hand to the sky. He was doing something to it, yanking and tearing at it angrily. The Fade groaned around them. The demons were _squirming._

Dorian’s lightning battered them from all sides. One down. Two down. All of them down except Rage and one… and one… _Fasta vass._ He’d lost track of the last Shade.

Fionn bunched his hand into a blazing fist and brought it sharply down to his belly. The rift screamed. The Fade rattled. Rage exploded in globs of molten energy. Fionn crowed with joy. And the last Shade peeled off the floor behind him, drawing itself up to full height, broken claws gleaming in the pale green light.

“Out of the way!” Dorian shouted.

The same impulsive, unformed spell that had struck Alexius ripped itself from his hands.

Fionn ducked and rolled. It was clumsy. He was trying to cradle his bow against his chest to protect it. He landed, sprawling, on his side.

Dorian’s magic blew the Shade’s head off. The demon died with a screech. But not before, with blind vindictiveness, it dragged its claws through Fionn’s left shoulder like a housecat shredding curtains.

The Herald of Andraste _screamed._


End file.
